The Transgressors eBook

CHAPTER XX.

IN THE ENEMY’S STRONGHOLD.

After an absence of weeks, during which time Harvey
Trueman carries the war into the very heart of the
Magnates’ strongholds, he returns to Chicago.
His first mission is to visit Sister Martha. She
had been kept in touch with his movements by short
notes and aggravatingly brief telegrams, which he
sent her as occasion permitted. In the papers
she finds but meagre notice of the progress which
the Independence party is making, for the censor of
the press has effectually silenced all the important
mediums. The News Associations, even, are brought
under the ban and are given to understand that a violation
of the orders of the Plutocratic Party will mean a
forfeiture of all privileges of transportation to
papers using the offensive news.

The meeting of these two ardent patriots is fraught
with emotion. Trueman is the more moved by reason
of the knowledge that he is regarded by Martha as
the embodiment of all virtue, wisdom and power.
He feels his incapacity to fill this exalted role,
especially as the unrequited love he bears for Ethel
Purdy is still burning in his heart.

“You do not seem yourself to-night,” Martha
tells him frankly.

“No, that is true; I have so much to think about;
so many details to keep in mind that I suffer from
abstraction when I am not under the stress of actual
labor.”

Trueman is seated beside a table in the centre of
the Sisters’ Home, which has come to be the
only haven of rest he knows in the whole world.
He is in a communicative mood, and appreciating that
the woman before him is an interested listener he
is ready to review the events of the campaign.

“I have so many evidences of treachery in my
own camp that at times I despair of the result of
the struggle,” he says, half despondently.

“It is the accursed power of gold that is fighting
you,” Martha breaks in vehemently. “O,
if we could only have a few thousand dollars to fight
them with their own weapon.”

At the mention of so paltry a sum to be pitted against
the unlimited millions of the Magnates, Trueman cannot
repress a smile.

“I know it may seem ludicrous for a woman to
talk politics,” continues his gentle adviser,
apologetically. “Yet it would not take as
much as you imagine to nullify the effect of the millions
of bribe money and tribute money that the Plutocrats
are spending.

“What would you have me do with the money?”

“Use it in enlightening the people as to their
true condition. It is impossible to conceive
of men who would knowingly sell their birthright.
The perfidy of the press is the sin of sins in this
age of unbridled iniquity,” she declares, her
face flushing with indignation. “Free speech
has not yet been totally interdicted. Speak to
the people; tell them to emancipate themselves.”

“You make me wish, almost, that your sex was
not debarred from the exercise of suffrage,”
Trueman declares. “If I receive as staunch
support from the men of the land as I have already
been accorded by the women I shall triumph at the
polls.